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Wednesday, 16 September 2015

In every interview that you’ll have, your interviewer will try to throw a wrench in your planned answers to see how you will react. We refer to those as ‘trick questions’, but they’re not malevolent, they’re just meant to see how you think on your feet. Here are the top 4 ‘trick questions’ that are utilized by interviewers.

We’ll see in this article not only what sort of answer your recruiter is looking for, but also why they are asking those questions in the first place.

1. "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”

We would say it’s a “heads or tails” question because it depends on what your recruiter wants. While some of them are genuinely interested in knowing more about you, others might just ask the question to make sure you will be a good candidate who is indeed in it for the long haul.

By asking that question, the recruiter would like to know if you have already thought about your future career, and if it’s realistic and well defined. As the question is rather tricky, what we suggest is to be vague but to show your ambition. We suggest something like “I would definitely see myself working in the human resources field and given that many things can happen in 5 years, I hope to rise professionally as well as personally.”

2. “What do you do if you realize that you’ve made a mistake in business?”

Everyone makes mistakes, but what your recruiter wants to know is that you’re capable of taking responsibility for your own actions.

It will be intolerable for him/her if you had blamed someone else for your own mistake.

The magical answer is: “I take the whole responsibility and will do my best to fix what occured due to the error. I’m going to learn from it and understand why it happened in order to avoid that in the future. If I cannot fix it by myself, I shall bring it to my superior alongside the steps I’ve taken to correct it already.”

3. “Why should we hire you instead of one of the many other applicants?”

This question is frequently asked at the end of an interview. This is asked by the interviewer because he would like to know why you are the best to hire among the rest of candidates.

His/her reputation is at stake depending if you are a good deal for the company or not.

The interviewer wants to ensure that his or her decision is the right one. In that case, you have to sell yourself. Make his job easier and convince him that you’ll bring great results and that you’ll integrate easily into the team. For example: “You should hire me because I was the best salesperson in my previous company. Indeed, I raised the sales rate by 20%.”

4. “What are your weaknesses?”

This is undoubtedly the most asked question by recruiters - it’s so they know what risks they may take on if they hire you.

In this case, you don’t have to be too honest and enumerate a list of all of your faults, nor should you say that you have none - as all people have faults and it will look disingenuous to say otherwise.

What you have to do in this situation is to say one of your faults, but directly go on with what you did to change it, and how you learned to work around it. Your fault, however, should be unrelated to the position. For example if you’re telling your recruiter that you are shy while applying for a sales position, you’ll never make it.